The invention relates to mats of inorganic fibres, in particular glass mats, with a special coating and decorative coatings, manufactured therefrom, in floor, ceiling and wall coverings, and also a method for their manufacture.
Decorative coatings in the form of two-dimensional rolls or sheets of material as mats based on thermoplastic fibres or cellulose fibres with decorative printing and, on occasion, with additional plastic finishes, are of sufficiently known art. Mat-form materials with mineral fillers as plasterboard reinforcements, or so-called decorator mats with mineral coatings, which after installation on the wall require a further coating, are also of known art.
Decorative coatings inside buildings, in particular in public and/or commercial buildings, must become ever safer with regard to the risks that can be brought about by fires. The heightened fire protection requirements are of known art from the legal regulations of the experts, which are steadily intensifying. These heightened requirements increasingly involve also individual components of internal structures, such as, for example, floor coverings, wall coverings and/or ceiling coatings. Such decorative elements, taken on their own, can sometimes be classified as unsafe with regard to the fire protection requirements, or else can be manufactured only very expensively. However, by the use of glass mats, which have decorative layers, the said fire protection requirements can be fulfilled. Printed mats of inorganic fibres, in particular glass mats, have calorimetric values of less than 5,000 J/kg, compared with paper with values of more than 10,000 J/kg, and thus automatically have an appropriate level of fire resistance. By this means it is possible to manufacture wall, floor or ceiling coverings in a very simple and safe manner.
The manufacture of printed mats of inorganic fibres, in particular glass mats, is not trivial. The high level of permeability to air of mats of inorganic fibres, in particular glass mats, leads to the fact that conventional coatings, e.g. those based on calcium carbonate and/or kaolin, fill the spaces between the fibres. This leads to end products that have an undesirably high mass per unit surface area of, for example, more than 260 g/m2, where the basic mat has a figure of only 55 g/m2. Comparable papers have in contrast a mass of approx. 70-80 g/m2 as end products.
Furthermore coatings or coating materials of known art lead to a surface quality that is insufficient to fulfil the high requirements of direct printing (e.g. rotary printing) or similar printing methods. Faults in the surface quality, such as for example unevennesses or micro-openings, lead to so-called missing dots, i.e. very small points on the surface that after printing have a lack of ink. The reason for this is that printing rollers are unable to wet such low points in the surface with ink.
The object was therefore to provide mats with a coating, which mats possess a very low total mass and a low permeability to air, and have an excellent surface quality.